Stanford assistant coach, Scott Armstrong and the Cardinal distance group filmed and produced a video of an impressive early season distance set. Thanks to Danny Thomson, Robert Hommel, Drew Cosgarea, Mitch Stoehr, Chris Pickard, and Bryan Offut for sharing their set. If you have a set that you think swimmers and swammers would like to watch, send it over and if it’s worthy we’ll post it.

I think the creator’s intent was probably to spice things up rather than give the same old boring workout videos we’ve all seen. You can probably find video of these guys’ strokes from old pac-10’s etc if you want to see that as well.

This was user submitted, you get what you get. It wasn’t THAT bad and if you are going to complain about a free viewing of a video no one forced you to watch, at least have the gaul to put your name with your comments.

OR, what I eluded to, pony up your own workout video if you can do better.

I would have loved to see a few more of the 100s- they were hauling. But I’m guessing they felt like no one would want to watch a 45 minute set straight through. It’s also difficult to shoot, store, and work with a 45 minute video in any decent quality. In any case, keep them coming! It’s fun to see from any team, but especially from Stanford seeing how much the doors were shut on outsiders previously.

I love these workout videos. Please keep them coming. It is always fun to see what kinds of sets different programs around the nation are doing. I’d love to see a video like this from the Distance group at UGA or the Sprint group at Cal. This really was one of the best features back when Floswimming was at its prime. It would be awesome if SwimSwam featured more training videos.

while i agree, the speeding up and slowing down detracts from the value of the footage, it is still nice to see training footage, as others said before me, that was everyones favorite side of flo swim. There is nothing that pisses me off more than a coach who refuses to share their training ideas with other coaches. I’ve only encountered a few who have refused to share any details of their training. I understand not wanting to give out full video footage or seasons worth of workouts, but refusing to share any info at all is disrespectful to swimming as a whole.

This was a great video to watch and I, too, would love to see more training videos. As for those who didn’t like the set, I’d suggest you try it yourself. The great thing about a set like this is that it’s quite easy to modify for swimmers of all speeds and it looks like a great early-to-mid season training set for distance swimmers.

So what do you think they split in their 500’s in season & end of season. Simple but good set. I like going 125’s in this situation as much like the 400 meter free, like to break it up into 1/4’s. So 6 x 125’s @ 2:00 (or whatever fits the purpose) holding all the 25’s the same times, as many go too fast the 1st 50 and then drop off to what they will really hold in a race.

The video and set inspired me to give it a go with our top group Saturday! We did the set as written and I added a 5:10 and 5:25 group as well as the 5:00 group, I let some Sprinters go 450’s so they could do the fast with the group. We had 5 swimmers try the 5:00 and 2 made 2 and missed one. The other 3 all were outstanding in my book, belwo are their results: 16 year old boy – 4:53, 4:54, 4:57, 100 Avg of 56.5 16 year old boy – 4:55, 4:58, 4:55, 100 Avg of 55.0 16 year old girl – 4:55, 4:57, 4:56, 100 Avg 55.0 One boy went 5:00-4:59-4:53 and avg 54’s on the 100’s The first fast 100 was always slower but then the next 4 were pretty consitant! Thanks for sharing and just wanted to let people know that the high school kids can do it as well!!!

Mike – When your boys were doing their 500s, what kind of work were they doing? Is that pace significantly faster than threshold for them? The guys going the 453-457s – are they 4:35, 4:40 500ers? Slower? Faster?

While we’re on it, how often are you doing sets with that much rest with teenagers? Just wondering.

One boy went 4:30 last year and 4:00 LC in the 400 this summer, the other just went 4:41 last weekend, the girl is a 4:48 and 4:12 in the 400… yes they should be going faster at meets based on the training We do a fair amount of fast (pace and higher). We had a 2.5 day meet Nov 2-3-4, took Monday AM off, Mon-PM was long & Strong, Tues was Sprints & 12×400 desc, Wed-AM Power Circuit, Wed-PM great set that was desc to FAST! Thur – 2×600, 4×400, 6×200 FAST avg on 3:00, Fri AM & PM were normal mod to mod hard and short speed work – and Saturday was that set. Happy to share more if needed. I’d say the 500’s were above EN2 for them, but they handled it well.

Northern Ky did this set as well. We did not have the times on the 500 as much but our 100’s were pretty strong. We had 1 boy do the set on 5:00…He put out 5:01 ‘s(Ooops) but averaged 52.0 on the 100’s… I am assuming no breaks were taken between rounds so we did it straight through. Our B and C cycles were 5:20 and 5:40(More sprint minded kids) most of these guys or girls averaged between 54 – 57’s . Love seeing sets like this.

About Garrett McCaffrey

No one lives the sport of swimming like Garrett McCaffrey. A Division I swimmer who spent 4 years covering the sport as a journalist, now coaches club swimming and competes as a masters swimmer, Garrett truly lives the sport of swimming.After graduating from University of Missouri’s award winning journalism program …